The finality of extinction is awesome.
Peter Matthiessen

Many volumes, including this one, rail against the awful finality of extinction. It is forever, yet still the species fall: the ivory-billed woodpecker, the passenger pigeon, and more recently the Yangtze dolphin. And soon the tiger, panda, mountain gorilla, and "snow monkey." And many more species less well known but just as significant to the web of life.

The blame that we must bear for this hemorrhaging of life on earth will surely corrupt the human spirit. It is inconceivable that the Creator would place so many species on earth and then permit man to destroy them without consequences.

Neuroses and depression run amuck in the modern world. So too does the search for a cause and cure. Assorted theories and potions have come and gone. Our modern, push-button world is missing something. Could it be the songbird, whose numbers plummeted by 50% last century in the U.S.? Or could it be the 25,000 elephants slaughtered in Africa last year to make ivory trinkets for sale in Asia? More tha 12% of the total elephant population, gone-in one year!

Many moons ago Chief Seattle wrote, "Without the beasts man would die of a great loneliness of spirit." Could it be the great chief was right?